I revealed in my blog yesterday that the average young adult spends 5 hours per day on social media. When you do the math, this amounts to 35hours per week and 140 hours per month – shocking statistics, right? Smartphones are an incredible invention, and I couldn’t be without mine, but how do we know when it’s becoming too much and taking over our lives? Here are a few signs you need a social media detox.
7 Signs You Need a Social Media Detox
#1 You have serious FOMO.
You’re on social media so frequently that you know every single event going on in a 20-mile radius every night. This knowledge leads to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), meaning you are going out partying far more often than you know you should be. A tired and partied out you are not your best self – if you have goals you aspire to achieve or want to progress in your career, give it a rest.
#2 You’re often mad at your friends.
Every time you see your friends out having fun, you feel a stab of betrayal and hurt that you weren’t invited. People are allowed to have other friends. If you weren’t bored, killing time scrolling down your social media pages, this would never have been an issue.
#3 You’re watching peoples’ lives you don’t care about.
All this time you’re wasting is mostly spent watching peoples’ lives you don’t even care about. Who cares what a friend who you haven’t spoken to since high school is doing? Why are you wasting your time watching her live her life when you should be living yours?
#4 You’re becoming needy.
Your need for attention is constantly intensifying – seek attention from the people in your life you know love and care for you. Comments from strangers don’t make any real impact on your life.
#5 You have like OCD.
Every time you post an image, you continually refresh the app every few minutes to see how many likes you accumulated. Let it go. Sometimes people will like images you post; sometimes they won’t.
#6 You feel dissatisfied with your life.
Those girls you always see out every night on dressed up in clubs surrounded by guys and bottles of alcohol? They’re probably there with promoters, drinking cheap free liquor before sleeping all day tomorrow. That lifestyle is fair for the younger years, but now you have goals to slay and things to do, stop watching their lives through app windows like a stalker. That flawless image displaying your particular concept of the perfect body? That image was likely taken 100 times to get the money shot and was edited and filtered to look the way it does. Stop comparing yourself to others.
#7 You’re becoming a troll.
If you find yourself regularly provoked into only arguments, and commenting back to defend your honor in addition to stirring reactions from others, you’re a troll. Why are you wasting your time and energy getting angry over the opinions of people you will never meet? You’re fighting with strangers; that’s weird when you think about it.
